Competence keeps company with agency and authority, but is more diffuse and less intentional. Ritual extends beyond the directly religious into the broader rhythms of everyday life. So, the editors of this volume and the organisers of the conference from which it developed suggest, the notion of ‘ritual competence’ can usefully be deployed to advance our understanding of the religious roles and activities of women in the ancient world in dialogue with other aspects of their lives. It is more inclusive, in both its parts, than some of the terms previously mobilised in the scholarship, but retains real analytical traction nonetheless. In what exactly this latter might consist is not spelt out in the short introduction to the collection, rather the promise is that it will be demonstrated in what follows: through chapters that will take a variety of approaches to a variety of materials, from a range of times and places in the ancient Mediterranean world, sharing a focus on women and ritual.

This range has a definitely Greek bias, though encompassing Magna Graecia and reaching from the early first millennium bc to Late Antiquity, but materials and methodologies, including approaches to ritual and competence certainly vary. The chapters are organised initially around objects and activities, then around claims to ritual agency or authority, contested, subversive or normative as they may be. I will briefly outline the variety on display before attempting to draw some conclusions.

Under the heading ‘Objects and Offerings’ M. Ferrer argues that the cooking ware which constitutes a substantial proportion of the ceramic material found on Sicilian acropolises from the early first millennium bc, and which resembles contemporary domestic assemblages, indicates that women prepared and served key foods consumed in the communal feasting rituals that occurred in these spaces. A. Karanika explores parallels between linguistic and ritual competence through analysis of the three episodes of female prayer in Homeric epic, concluding that in all of them physical objects anchor effective performance. C. Brøns makes the case for the importance of textiles as votive offerings and ritual artefacts both in Classical Greek religion generally and in female religious activity more particularly. Women were not only the key producers and dedicants of these materials, but also washed and dressed the cult images, which were ritually robed, giving them a particular intimacy with the divine. T. D'Angelo and M. Muratov offer a new interpretation of an intriguing set of half-lifesize terracotta statues of young women from Hellenistic tombs in Canosa, southern Italy. They suggest these figures should be connected to young women's role in funerary rites, indeed, may have featured in the performance of these rituals before entombment.

Proceeding to ‘Authority and Transmission’, L. Maurizio investigates the relationship between women's ritual lament and prophecy, especially the oracles of the Pythia. Both demonstrate female competence in verse composition, and their affinity added an ominousness to women's lament, which was a factor in the moves by Greek cities to restrict female mourning. L. McClure focuses on the figuration of Iphigenia as priestess in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris, analysing her ritual competence and cunning in the context of the imaginary Taurian polis and the ways this might reflect on women's priestly roles and religious authority in Classical Athens. I. Salvo uses curse tablets and amulets as evidence for women's ritual knowledge and action around issues of fertility and health.

Moving on to ‘Control and Resistance’, L. O'Higgins returns to Homer and to textiles, exploring the rich resonances of Penelope's web in the Odyssey. Her weaving and un-weaving suggest a ritual agency that interrupts and reverses the passage of time. Another aspect of female domesticity – food preparation – features once again in M. Dillon's treatment of the women-only festivals of Classical Attica. Household skills become ritual competence in the Thesmophoria, Haloa and Dionysian rites, but this translation is a complex one, he avers, subversive as well as normative. B. MacLachlan attempts to bring together the, mostly material, evidence from Classical and Hellenistic southern Italy and Sicily for a range of female activities, or female performances, religious or otherwise (and often comic), arguing that women's ritual transgression empowered them in other cultural fields.

The ‘Denial and Contestation’ of the final section occurs in the Roman world. First, J.B. Lott tries to bring the cognitive ritual form theory of R.N. McCauley and E.T. Lawson to bear on an anecdote in Cassius Dio about Augustus and a prophetic woman, with mixed results. Then E. Eidinow reclaims the female ‘victims’ of magical and demonic attack in a set of early Christian texts from simplistic readings that emphasise their passive reinforcement of male power. A more nuanced approach reveals the ways the women in these narratives partake in a shared vulnerability, which can only be overcome by their developing the relevant Christian competences, under the auspices of the Church certainly, but crucially also for themselves. Lastly, D. Lyons scrutinises Plutarch's and Pausanias’ engagements with a range of Greek and Roman rituals involving women, more or less exclusively. The distance enforced by both male prohibition and the passage of time, she argues, pushes these authors towards respect and comfort in their approach, the continuity of men's ignorance becomes simple continuity, which has a valued place in the changing world order.

There is no concluding essay, no closing remarks, so how to sum up? What do all these explorations of women and ritual in the ancient world have to offer beyond individual insights, valuable as they are? What generalities emerge out of this series of varied engagements that readers will find more or less convincing or compelling, depending on their own interests and inclinations? For there are disadvantages as well as advantages to the loose capaciousness of the concepts of ritual and competence enacted, and occasionally elaborated, here. A new term, a new space for women to occupy in analysing their religious activities in the ancient world has been introduced, which has proven useful in stimulating study and debate, but remains hard to pin down and thus hard to assess overall. A sense of what female ritual competence might look like is offered in this volume, but less sense of what it might signify. What is at stake in the recurring overlap between women's domestic and religious roles, for example, if one of the shared features is ritual competence, as well as the content and context of the task – such as textile or food production? Perhaps it is enough just to have the question raised for the time being, with the hope that answers will be forthcoming in due course.